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Notes -
Donald Trump Won the Iran War
From an essay endorsed by Pete Hegseth on twitter:
Critics say that Iran is winning because they now control the Straits of Hormuz. In reality it appears that trade in the Gulf is returning to pre-war levels as it risks the Straits or bypasses them entirely:
Critics say that the Iran War has driven America's allies to shake off American leadership. In fact we see the opposite:
America recently carried out strikes in Iraq, working with the Saudi military, to push out Iranian militias, and is now concluding multi-billion dollar business deals:
Meanwhile, how's America's blockade going?
Iran’s oil exports stall and Kharg Island idles under US blockade
It's possible that Iran has been unable to successfully sell it's oil for even longer:
Iran is still able to make money from oil tankers that left the Gulf during the last ceasefire and are currently in Asia, but that crude will all be sold soon and Iran will start to be squeezed even more, unless they come to a deal with the US or somehow engineer a military miracle.
Iran is facing inflation of ~87.9%, which is to say, the average Iranian has lost almost half of their wealth compared to this point last year:
How's Iran's Nuclear Program doing? The New York Times put out this report today concluding that Iran's program is "slowed but not stopped":
[https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/07/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-program.html](Trump Vowed to Thwart Iran’s Nuclear Program. Here’s Where That Stands.)
However, under the headline, here's where things stand:
Iran has enough nuclear material to manufacture 10 nuclear bombs? Wow, what are they going to do with it?
America destroyed Iran's capability to "convert or enrich" that uranium, and then locked the uranium that remains deep under collapsed tunnels that can be bombed again as soon as Iran tries to retrieve it.
The sites that were bombed last year appear to remain inoperable, which is to say that, after America bombed them, they have not been used.
(The New York Times then concludes that this is both a significant setback and also doesn't actually matter at all. Well, that's what I heard three months ago. I'm sure that three months from now, people will still be saying that Iran can build a nuke anytime it wants to, it just doesn't want to.)
So here's where we're at now:
Trump, Iran, and Oman are apparently on the cusp of announcing another deal to reopen the Strait. But it increasingly doesn't matter: Iran needs to make a deal because their economic crisis is so acute, while America and the rest of the Gulf can shrug it all off as increasingly a minor inconvenience.
Trump won. Trump was right from the beginning. The Iran war is below-the-fold news now.
Iran will never toll the strait, Iran will never bring the global economy to its knees, Iran will never have nuclear weapons. Iran cannot defeat America militarily or overcome the blockade. The Iranian regime will eventually fall, or make significant concessions, or surrender, or continue to limp along losing strength and relevance -- it doesn't matter which. Either way, Iran loses, America wins, the writing is on the wall.
Trump won. Iran lost.
Going down the list,
The UAE is the worst possible example because they literally flew a cargo plane loaded with billions of dollars in cold hard cash to Tehran to pay the Mullahgeld. The fact that Iran's neighbors are now paying them protection money to use a strait that was previously free is a point for "Iran is winning".
A bizarre example considering Israel also rejected the deal. Not that you have many better examples, considering the other Gulf "allies" are currently either begging Iran to stop hitting them or paying them protection money, kind of the opposite of what you'd expect strengthened American allies to do.
Again, you keep giving examples that prove the exact opposite of what you intend. The Saudis attacked Iraqi militias because they launched a coordinated attack along with the Houthis on their oil infrastructure, effectively demonstrating that Iran can cripple Gulf oil production relying entirely on proxies hitting the production sites directly should a Hormuz blockade be insufficient.
In the same place as it was after Midnight Hammer, which is to say that it's irrelevant to judging the success of this war.
But the general consensus is that Iran's centrifuges were definitely evacuated and their HEU is either spread across the country, evacuated to a new location or sitting at Fordow waiting to be dug out. It would not be particularly hard in any case for the Iranians to turn said HEU into a bomb regardless but I personally think the odds they race for a bomb are actually pretty low, if only because the Saudis or Emiratis getting a nuke is about the only way they could deter Iran alone at this point.
The deal Iran cut with Oman includes a 5-7% toll, a ban on "Zionist shipping" and an exemption for the Chinese, hence why the oil price is rising again. If we count confirmed Mullahgeld payments like the UAE's moneyplane then not only will Iran toll the strait but they have already tolled the strait so even by your definition Trump lost.
Then again, I'm sure even if ships literally had to sail through a giant gate marked "IRAN TOLL BOOTH" generating Iran tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year you would still find some way to pretend that this was all part of Trump's master plan.
Mr. Chatgpt and Mr. Gemini both agree that it's physically impossible for that plane to transport remotely close to the claimed amount. Maybe there was a bribe in that plane but the overall claim is not credible.
How are LLM's reliable here? They are word predictors not engineers. They have no way of calculating what is and isn't feasible.
LLMs are perfectly capable of looking up simple values such as the cargo capacity of an airplane, and the weight of money, and doing the simple arithmetic based on this.
If you disagree you are more than capable of performing the back of the envelope calculation by hand.
The onus is on you to verify what the LLM outputs, not for us to do it. Anyone can query an LLM, the only thing that makes such output valuable is when a human fact checks it.
I'm the most rabid anti AI luddide on this forum and I can tell you that LLMs can do perfect basic arithmetic.
I'm ready to wager $50 right now that you can't demonstrate a single example of gpt 5.x, gemini pro 3.x, claude opus 4.x making an error of more than 10% of basic arithmetic (plus minus multiply divide) for any 2 numbers up to 10^10. Just share the chat link and I will PP you the money.
Justification for 10% margin: since we are talking back of the envelope calculation, a trivial error does not change the answer
Not that I am not asking for the latest models, but I am ruling out cost optimized models (gpt mini, gemini flash) as they are intentionally compromising capability heavily to lower cost.
If you can avoid the tool calls, you can still get multiplication-of-decimal errors, but it is increasingly rare. That said, I'd be more concerned about the problem being under-specified; the same question asked a different way gets a different answer.
EDIT: I make no claims about the politics, here, which I'd expect to have larger impact.
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Maybe it was flying in rare Beanie Babies.
Would be almost as hysterical if they flew a plane out there transporting a piece of paper with the number of a checking account on it though.
More realistically it would be to sign papers over the deal and shake hands
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To concede a minor point, I don’t find it ridiculous to imagine that some Gulf states would be bribing Iran. It would actually be very natural. So I don’t want to come off as pointing and laughing - dismissing.
But it doesn’t really make a difference if they are.
US sanctions and blockades are taking tens or hundreds of billions of dollars out of Iran’s economy.
Iran makes a few billion in bribes.
Iran lets traffic through the strait.
In effect, Iran sells its only possible leverage for pennies on the dollar.
The war can continue indefinitely on those terms: America strangles Iran out while global trade is basically unaffected.
That really only trends in one direction and it’s not an Iranian victory.
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Your source for this is Iranian news outlet Tabnak, which offers as proof two pictures of a plane flying over Tehran.
If you would read the article you linked, you would see that Israel rejects the deal because it asks them to make certain withdrawals, and the Board of Peace is making clear that Hamas will be disarmed before Israel has to commit to any such withdrawals.
America attacks Iranian allies, this is proof that Iran could win if they want to... Ok, when should we expect Iran to finally cripple Gulf oil production? Or barring that, since Gulf countries are paying the Iranians bribes, when should we expect Iran's financials to turn around?
Iran can produce a bomb whenever they want to, they just don't want to.
You are just repeating the worst sort of slop Iranian propaganda while calling me credulous. Do you want to defend the position that, any day now, "The Strait would become about as profitable as Alphabet ($132B in 2025)"? Can we make a bet on this? Please?
It seems like Iran is just months away from tolling the strait, months away from building a nuke, and months away from winning the war. Just like they were a few months ago. Curious why they haven't won yet.
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